My Most Recent Position Paper by Bob Hicok

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 28, 2016   My Most Recent Position Paper   Bob Hicok

A little bit of hammering goes a long way toward making the kind of noise I want my heart to look up to—or have you ever gone into a woods and applauded the light that fights its way to the ground, and the shadows, and the explosions of feathers where blue jays have been ripped into the bright and hungry future of hawks— and there’s this—writing an etude by pushing pianos off a cliff until one of them howls or whispers just so—like a vagrant slipping into a clean bed or a man lifting a dying child toward the sun and begging help,  rescue—if my eyes could speak, they’d be mouths—the tongues of my fingers ask to be words against your skin—and when I was a librarian, I lost my job for exhorting patrons to sing “Bye Bye Miss American Pie”— it’s not what we do here, I was told— yet I know this is a world made by volcanoes, and don’t want to keep this awareness of kaboom to myself—so have picked up my zither and begun walking and strumming like an idiot who thinks music is all a body needs to feed itself— and though I haven’t eaten in years, I have been fed.            Copyright © 2016 Bob Hicok. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I wrote the first few lines and liked their optimism. The rest of the poem is just me seeing where those lines wanted to take me.” —Bob Hicok   Bob Hicok is the author of Sex & Love & (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). He teaches at Purdue University.   Poetry by Hicok   Sex & Love & (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)    "The Praying Tree" by Melinda Palacio "The Libraries Didn't Burn" by Elaine Equi "Wonder and Joy" by Robinson Jeffers Poems on the Air   Every weekday at 6 p.m. (EST) during National Poetry Month, New York’s classical music station WQXR 105.9 FM will feature a special reading of a poem from the Poem-a-Day series. Tune in or visit wqxr.org. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038